


Finding Himself

by FireDancer



Series: DCU Short works [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireDancer/pseuds/FireDancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't where he thought it would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Himself

It wasn't where he thought it would be. At first he thought of the pit, where he'd come back to himself and found the anger that drove him. Then the he returned to his grave and the headstone that still stood, telling a strange sort of truth. Part of him was still buried there, but it wasn't the part he was looking for.

Then the rubble of the warehouse where he'd died, and though the sight of it made him scream with rage and fear, it didn't give him what he wanted. The Manor where he'd been happy and safe for the first time in his life felt different. Wrong. There was a shadow haunting it that had nothing to do with a bat and everything to do with a child taken away too soon. There wasn't room for both of them.

All the Cave did was fuel his anger, clouding his thoughts until he forgot why he was there, forgot why he'd been there to begin with, all those years ago. Returning to the spot where he met the Bat for the first time didn't help. He could only remember the hunger and the cold and the angry defiance that had sunk so deep in his bones it defined him.

None of it was what he wanted, what he *needed*, and the search pushed him further and further from the places he'd known before he died. He fought, nothing but the familiar wrath to sustain him, letting it drive him to kill, to strike at those he'd loved once. That *lack* was driving him mad.

He'd almost stopped searching, so close to giving himself over to the insanity, when he found it in an unconscious reaction to a threat he hadn't even fully recognized. Instead of looking down at the overly ambitious pimp, unconscious and bleeding from a savage blow to the head, he looked up to the grateful eyes of a skinny little runaway and felt something snap into place.

He hadn't only been angry. He'd never *only* been angry. He'd wanted to protect people, and now... now he would start to do it again.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: http://community.livejournal.com/comment_fic/165621.html?thread=35871477#t35871477


End file.
